The Mismade Girl is a stage illusion, designed by American magician Chuck Jones.

Doug Henning preforming Mismade in his 1981 film of The Magic Show

Basic Effect

Four cubes with open top and bottom are stacked to form a cabinet. An assistant stands inside and the cabinet is closed. Metal blades are slid into the cabinet, apparently slicing the assistant into four pieces, and closing the top and bottom of each cube. The cubes are then unstacked, and restacked in a different order. Inset doors in the front of the cabinet are opened, and it appears that the assistant's body has divided and rearranged. The whole process is then reversed, and the assistant is released unharmed.

The Mismade Girl can also be performed as a production effect - four cubes, each apparently too small to contain a person, are stacked into a cabinet, which is then opened to reveal someone inside.

The Masked Magician performed the Mismade Girl on his third television special, with Elizabeth Ramos as his assistant.

Variants

Illusionist Peter Gossamer performs a version called Totally Tubular, which uses a vertical tube, made of a dark translucent plastic, with a crude humaniform outline on the front. After restacking, rather than opening doors, lights are turned on inside, apparently showing the assistant divided into pieces, before then opening the front of the slice containing the assistant's head. Instead of reversing the process, sections of the outline are exchanged, and the blades then removed.

A new version of the Mismade Girl has recently appeared, referred to either as the Italian Mismade, or Mismade Improved. In this version the assistant's hands and feet are in view for much of the illusion. This gives the impression that illusion could not be performed using the method of the original Mismade Girl.